Following news that Business Link is to be scrapped, entrepreneur Robert Ashton says the support organisation should become a social enterprise and start charging for its services.
I want Business Link to stay, not as a publicly funded, rule bound monolith, but as a vibrant, self managed social enterprise, flexible, adaptable and responsive to local need. In other words, I’d like to see Business Link embrace the principle of 'Big Society' and generate its own income by selling advice and support people will willingly pay for.
In fact I'm surprised they didn't pre-empt the hardly unexpected 'shock announcement' and propose this themselves. The 'Big Society' concept is far from new. Phillip Blond’s book 'Red Tory' was published in early April and clearly illustrated that if Cameron moved into Number 10, the funding would move out of the Business Link contracts.
It's not as if Business Link does not work in an entrepreneurial environment. They have their own teams of adviser who, so they tell us, are all experts in their field. Moreover they have that handy database of consultants with the skills their diagnostic service might identify that they themselves are lacking.
I explained 'Big Society' to the aged Trustees of a local Community Hospital's League of Friends recently. Despite almost all being well past eighty, they quickly saw and grasped the opportunity. Now we're working with their local GPs and the PCT to create an exciting new community owned nursing home that will contain we have 15 NHS community hospital beds.
Don't you find it depressingly ironic that a bunch of retired gentlefolk should faster off the mark than Business Link when it comes to responding to the Big Society opportunity?
Come on Business Link show us that you really can practice what you preach. Tell the government to stick their funding and create Business Link Community Interest Company (CIC)!
Robert Ashton is a social entrepreneur and business author. His website is at www.robertashton.co.uk.
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